Dell XPS 15 2-in-1
Flipping the page on gaming laptops.
After many years alone on the frontier the Surface Book 2 finally has a some serious competition in Dell’s latest XPS 15 2-in-1. The device features a new Intel Core i7-8705G CPU that integrates a Radeon RX Vega M GPU from AMD for entry level gaming laptop performance in a super compact form factor. The starting price for a FullHD Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 is an eye watering RRP of $3399, but Dell’s web store had it on sale for $2,899 at the time of writing. This configuration comes with 8GB of RAM, but you can bump this to 16GB and slap on a 15.6-inch 4K Infinity Edge display for a RRP of $3,899 ($3,314 on 15% sale). The almost edge to edge display looks amazing and the premium looking hinge design offers stability and flexibility to the convertible. The keys are a little shallow, but the keyboard’s maglev butterfly switches offer good spacing and resistance, and the trackpad has the perfect balance of glide and precision. While this unit tops performance in the 2-in-1 category, it’s got tougher competition in the gaming laptop category, coming in around the bottom of the pack in raw CPU performance and general work tasks. The AMD GPU gets better graphical performance than a Nvidia GTX 1050, so this tablet can run older games on 1080p Ultra settings at 40fps plus and will even get averages above 30fps on titles like Far Cry Primal and Ghost Recon: Wildlands if you curb those graphics settings to High/ Very High 1080p. Battery life is good for a gaming laptop but isn’t great overall at 2:46 hours under strenuous home usage conditions.